anti-abortion law

The Supreme Court today declined to hear a case out of Arizona seeking to end the blocking of a state law limiting the availability of medicinal, nonsurgical abortions. Opponents of the law, which had been blocked by a lower court, say it would all but put an end to medication abortions in the state. This is not the first time this year the justices sided with abortion rights advocates. In October the Supreme Court allowed more than a dozen abortion clinics in Texas to remain open, blocking a state law that would have shut them down.

In Arizona, the 2012 law requires abortion providers to comply with a 2000 protocol from the Food and Drug Administration for mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that is sometimes called RU-486, reports The New York Times. The Legislature said the law was meant to “protect women from the dangerous and potentially deadly off-label use of abortion-inducing drugs.” Since 2000, doctors have found the drug, in proper doses, is safe and effective, undermining the anti-choice intent behind the state law.

But federal appeals court Judge Edith Jones, writing for a three-judge panel of that court, ruled in favor of one of the country’s most onerous anti-abortion laws. The law, which requires women to undergo an ultrasound and then view images from it, even if they have no interest in doing so, was upheld against a class action challenge lodged by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Judge Jones, as NARL’s blog for choice, points out has a staunch anti-abortion background. In 1993, the blog noted that Jones, as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, voted to uphold a Mississippi law requiring “young women seeking abortion care to receive permission from both parents – even if she comes from a home where there is physical or emotional abuse.” And in a 2004 case, Jones wrote, as NARAL’s blog notes, “One may fervently hope that the Court will someday … re-evaluate Roe and Casey [Supreme Court opinions upholding a woman’s constitutional right to abortion] accordingly.”

Earlier this week in Texas Medical Providers Performing Abortion Services v. Lakey, Jones leading the unanimous panel overturned U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks preliminary injunction against the Texas law finding that it likely violated the First Amendment. Sparks wrote, “The Act compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen.”